In the evolving field of video editing, the objective has been to select segments of video source material for purposes of video editing including the reordering of segments for subsequent viewing as desired, selective viewing, and the like. As the art developed, techniques became available for digitizing vast quantities of video source material thereby facilitating the ability to very conveniently splice and otherwise edit these vast quantities of video source material. When attempting to design video editors, those skilled in the art immediately became faced with many problems when the target user was essentially a video novice. Such a class of users was of particular interest to the industry, primarily due to the large number of members they represented when compared with video professionals and skilled amateurs. However, provision for practical video editing to this market segment was also extremely challenging because such users typically cannot accommodate or tolerate any unnecessary complexity in video editing systems.
Throughout the course of development of video editing art, such complexity unfortunately typically became built into professional editors due to the need for maximum flexibility. Accordingly, the designer of equipment and systems for mass use in video editing faced huge technical challenges in making such systems truly easy to use as well as useful.
As but one example, the presence of video cameras or "camcorders" have become popular with the general public. The typical user desires the capability to edit video source material generated from such cameras but unfortunately the cost, complexity, and limited availability of appropriate editing equipment makes this totally prohibitive for the vast majority of camcorder owners. As previously noted, with the advent of digital video becoming commonplace, the possibility of providing video editing equipment for mass use became feasible for the first time due to the reduced cost of such equipment. However, making the editing process convenient to the mass market still nevertheless remained an immense challenge.
Many attempts were thus made in the art to find critical paradigm changes to facilitate simplified video processing and editing for the masses. However they all typically missed a critical point by continuing to demand that the user deal with video on a frame-by-frame basis. Such a burden was of course quite acceptable for the video professional wherein each video sequence and often relatively small series of video frames were extremely valuable assets in the hands of skilled professional editor. Accordingly such a trained person could justify the expense and time required to deal with video source material on a frame basis. However, it became clear that the mass user still required a more natural and simple way of dealing with editing and organization of video segments.
One metaphor that seemed attractive and of potential application was that of scanning text in a newspaper. Video material was long known as being superior for concentrated and fixed speed communication that develops along a single time dimension. However the two dimensions of printed material have long been known as superior for browsing and editing for the information consumer. The reader typically looks at headlines placed on a large two dimensional space and quickly selects the articles of interest, thereby avoiding having to read every word in the paper to find wanted material. In like manner, books were obviously provided with tables of contents and indices for similar purposes. Similar ease of access to video was highly desired wherein less sophisticated users might be provided with an automatic way to quickly scan video to identify wanted material and to be reminded of forgotten contents. Thus a system and method were highly desired which were designed to allow the video developer a critical paradigm shift to encourage and greatly expanded video applications, combining the advantages of video and printed material. This was desired in order to form a new user-interactive communication tool which would be extremely powerful for education, business, and entertainment purposes. Put simply, a solution was needed which provided a critical concept permitting appropriate paradigm shifts for greatly simplified video operations.
In one system which attempted to effect a more simplified correlation between desired video segments and means for recalling the content of these segments to the user or editor, one or more still frames was identified with a sequence of frames comprising a video segment for purposes of editing, wherein the still frame was representative of the segment. In this manner, still frames served as convenient "place holders" or reminders to the editor of the content of the related video segment source material.
Such a system produced the need for the user to continuously scan through video frames during the editing process once the association was made between the frame or frames and its corresponding sequence. The system required such manual scanning of frames in order to make the association in the first place. Thus, the problem remained of easing the task of selecting boundaries between segments, and a means was highly sought after for simplifying this process. This object and the foregoing goals have been fully met by the subject invention, a description of which hereinafter follows which may be more easily understood with reference to the following drawings wherein: